Comparison of the perception of space in virtual reality and in the real world

Abstract

The subject of the study is investigation the accuracy and identify the features of spatial information perception in virtual reality. During the experiment, the subjects were asked to estimate the distances to objects and between objects in virtual environment in metric units without the presence of reference objects with known dimensions in the virtual environment. It was found that in the complete absence of metric support in the action space in the real world, subjects estimated metric distances with an error of about 2 meters at 8 meters, 3 meters at 13-15 meters, and 2 meters at 30 meters. In contrast, in a virtual environment, the subjects estimated a distance of 8 meters with an error of 4 meters, a distance of 13-15 meters with an error of 7-8 meters, and a distance of 30 meters with an error of 18 meters. Introducing metric support is likely to significantly improve the result, and abandoning the metric distance measurement scale, which is not natural for humans, will considerably increase the accuracy of spatial information perception. It should be noted that in the field of long-range vision (30 meters or more) in virtual reality, the accuracy of information perception is extremely low.